1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to a drain gutter debris guard to be installed on conventional gutter to prevent leaves, tree needles, bark and other debris from entering and clogging the gutter. Further, the present invention includes a method of making the drain gutter debris guard according to the present invention.
2. Prior Art
Gutters are for collecting rain water flowing off the roof and to direct the water away from the foundation of the building. The clogging of gutters is a leading cause of wet basements and crawl spaces in houses. Gutter cleaning must be done periodically to prevent blockages that impede the flow of water. Many soils with high moisture content expand fully when wet and shrink when dry, exerting pressure on the foundation that can cause them to crack and leak.
Clogged gutters fill up with water exerting heavy weight at the midpoint between downspouts causing the gutters to sag and thereby reversing the normal drainage slope. Standing water, rotting leaves and trapped debris in the gutters produce corrosive acids causing damage to the gutters, roof and building fascia and soffit.
Gutter cleaning is hazardous, especially for elderly people. The customary way to clean gutters is by hand with a ladder from below or on the roof above. There are a number of relatively new systems for cleaning leaves out of gutters such as air blowers or vacuum devices, water pressure hoses, and mechanical snakes to get the trapped debris out of the downspouts.
The solution to all of these problems is to prevent leaves, tree needles, seeds, bark and other outdoor type debris from ever entering the drain gutter.
There exists a number of drain gutter guards that are available on the market and/or have been patented. Some of these guards use a screen or mesh type material to cover the upper opening into the conventional drain gutter to prevent debris from entering the drain gutter while allowing rain water to drain from the roof into the drain gutter. These types of guards provide initial protection when first installed in preventing larger debris, particularly leaves, from entering the drain gutter. However, smaller size debris such as tree needles, particles of barks, deteriorate leaves, fall leaf chips, spring tree blossoms, twigs and other debris measuring less than a quarter inch tend to penetrate through many of the guards using larger mesh size and eventually clod the drain gutter. In order to alleviate the problem, the guard must be removed from the gutter to get at the debris for removal. This is a bothersome chore for a homeowner and a continuing source of frustration.
Further, with time, smaller debris that is still too large to penetrate fully through the guard but small enough to begin penetrating the larger mesh of the guard becomes trapped and eventually clods the guard preventing the entry of water into the drain gutter and defeating the primary functioning of the drain gutter.
Some attempts have been made to reduce the mesh size of the material used in constructing the guards, however, the structural strength of this material with respect to bending greatly decreases with decreasing mesh size requiring structural supporting or stiffening in order to bridge the dimension of the opening of the conventional drain gutter. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,769,957 to Knowles, discloses a gutter guard utilizing a metal frame for supporting fine mesh screening that spans only a portion of the opening into a conventional gutter covering (i.e. approximately one-half (1/2) to three-fifths (3/5) the span). A different approach to this problem was attempted in U.S. Pat. No. 4,841,686 to Rees, which discloses a rain gutter assembly using a larger size mesh screen supporting a filter pad fastened in contiguous relationship beneath the screen. In this assembly, the larger size mesh screen is used as a structural stiffener and support for the filter pad, which provides a high filtering effect to prevent fine debris from passing through the assembly into the drain gutter.